Writers International Edition

GUNS IN GARDENS: Poem by Laksmisree Banerjee

Ah, can you not hear the hoarse cries of the approaching torpedo?
The suppressed grunting of the angry thunder?
The incinerating rage of the lightning in the blossoming gardens?
Can you not see the outstretched arms of wailing green branches
Reaching out to the school- bagged, uniformed children
Walking side by side for their morning prayers in classrooms?
Those that you push into battle gear with hazardous guns
Those that wallow in fury of uncontrolled angst
You convert schools into warzones splattered with soft cherry blood
Lobbies steeped in crime and greed
For arming children with guns of death
Rather than books of life?
O you creed of super-powerdom
May you become one of peace and love
To sustain the whiteness of your doves—–
Inhuman hate-clad hubris in loose strings
Spectral terror of the darkest purple clouds
Floating above in aimless dislocation
Rudderless unreigned juvenile wrath
In the clutches of gun-totting monstrosity
In zones of misplaced machoism
From Texas to California
From Florida to New York
Usurped by unloved reckless anger
As forests and multihued rainbows weep
shedding blood and tears
In a land of unabated guns of annihilation
Shattering ceaselessly tender leaves of blooming buds in disarray
Nettled in thorny fogs of unwashed innocence
Prodded in disenchantment to kill and shatter
Beauty of tumescent new lives…….
Ah the dissolved souls and fainted cries
The muted reverberations die across the ocean
As life becomes a toy of unbridled cruelty
Smothered forever in silence
In the precincts of innocence—–

Poem by
Laksmisree Banerjee
©Laksmisree Banerjee 2022

2 thoughts on “GUNS IN GARDENS: Poem by Laksmisree Banerjee”

  1. Luz Martinez

    So poignant and haunting. The monstrosity of these killings that all can see except those who have the power to stop it.

  2. The sole scarlet red that has its place in a garden is that of the red budding roses… May they scatter their fragrance all around and blow the gunpowder smoke away!

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